Rose Akras gained her Master of Education in Arts from the Amsterdam University of the Arts and studied in São Paulo, London, New York and Amsterdam (at the SNDO). Following her career as a dancer, she worked in in the performing arts field in the Netherlands and Brazil. Akras is the initiator and director of the performance art week FLAM (Forum of Live Art Amsterdam). She has been teaching movement research at the Amsterdam University of the Arts since 2006, and leads workshops in Europe and Brazil dancers, actors, social workers, physiotherapists, and art and architecture students.
Her research lesson takes multiple lines of investigation into the integral body and how it relates to space, ranging from the development of a personal movement idiom to social communication. As a practitioner and programmer she is particularly interested in the dialogue between, and transgression of, disciplines – particularly dance and the visual arts.

Her work has appeared at Julidans, Arti, Kunstvlaai and De Nieuwe Vide gallery in the Netherlands; Month of Performance Art, Berlin; VERBO / Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo and Manifesta 11/Cabaret Voltaire, Zürich. She is a participant in the Let it Keep Secrets exhibition on the work of Michael Gibbs (Stedelijk Museum, Soledad Senlle Art Foundation, November to December 2016).

an essay – a visual mapping – a field of dance among people and buildings

‘Taking place’ examines 'the local' and 'the locality' as concepts in a new and rapidly developing urban area. What is it that makes someone feel ‘local’ at a specific time and place? Does that feeling have a resonance in the physical, spatial or geographic realm? Is it possible to create ‘locality’?

The term ‘locality’ is used in all sorts of disciplines, ranging from social geography to physics, but its meaning always encompasses a sense of space, time and a zone of communication between components. Is it possible to create a zone of interaction with various new users of the Overhoeks buildings to strengthen and enrich the sense of being ‘local’?

In addition to dance as an artistic discipline, this research incorporates a number of other phenomena: urban development, gentrification and the dynamics of connectedness, and elements of Chinese square dancing. Taking theory as its departure point Taking Place will deploy a survey to investigate how users of the various buildings in the area view their spatial, social and geographical relationship with the area. Once collected and collated, the information will form the basis for a visual mapping and an essay. The ultimate wish is to instigate a playful live action (a dance?) with the users that will take place among the buildings.